


A Steven Universe "Momswap"

by writt



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Momswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22034017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writt/pseuds/writt
Summary: Earth has prospered under the protection of the Crystal Gems, the planets stalwart defenders. The fourteen year old Steven Universe aspires to do the same, protect his home and its people from those that wish it harm.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	A Steven Universe "Momswap"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jasper struggles with grief.

I.

The silence was paramount. The stars above squeezed themselves through ethereal cloud cover. They shone brilliantly alongside the presence of a moon diffused. Snow, having fallen so recently and so heavily, granted the appearance of a white plane broken by upstart lamp posts, picket fences and two-story homes. Jasper looked at the sodium lamp spewing its auburn light onto her. She tuned herself to hear its hum mingle with the cool whispers of air. This was stalling. She knew that much. And she couldn’t stand it. The light itself wasn’t unpleasant, it was the reflection of it off her gem that made her huff and rub her eyes. _She’d want you to,_ the quartz told herself, _she_ wanted _you to._

The snow, ankle-deep to an average-sized human, proved no difficult task for a quartz soldiers boot soles to connect with the hidden sidewalk. A hand groped the package in her vest as the van sitting in the driveway grew and grew. There were heaps of snow collected on the lawn, baking in the light pouring from the windows. The tracks left in the snow were uniform and numerous, like someone had taken a rake to the pile. With edges of super dense talcum animated by technological pretension.

Jasper sighed and peered through the window. She was taken aback, seeing a somewhat portly human looking back at her with complementary bewilderment. There was a muffled murmur faintly apparent on the air, but nearly impossible to decipher. She squeezed the package in her pocket tighter. _No,_ she surmised quickly with a mind crackling in embarrassment, _I’m not ready. I told her. I told her._ A heel spun and aimed to have cleared the fence surrounding the lawn, but never got the chance.

“Hey,” was the word that hung ahead of the wailing. The gem stopped, and with a fair struggle, looked back onto the home. Loud and incessant, the past murmuring had been released by the open door as crying. In nothing but sweatpants and t-shirt the human stood at the doorway.

Jasper looked at him.

“Do you want to come in?” the human asked. “I didn’t think I’d see you today. Peridot said-”

“It’s tomorrow,” she said with a touch too much sand. The man chuckled in that peculiar way.

“Yeah. I guess it is,” the human stroked his beard and yawned. “He’s doing a good job of keeping his old man busy. Guess I just lost track of time.”

Jasper shifted on her feet. “Greg. You look, deficient.”

“That's one way of putting it,” he surmised. “Look, Jasper. Um, do you want to take this inside?”

 _No._ “Sure.” It felt like a largely unconscious action, that traversal over the lightly dusted walkway. At eight feet, she towered both over Greg and the door frame behind him.

“Great,” the human said with all the enthusiasm his sleep deprived form could muster. He began to walk in. “Just, careful on the way in, Vid-”

Splinters and wood erupted where Jasper placed a hand to push herself inside.

“-alia is out of… Nevermind.”

Jasper shut the door (as best one could given the damage) and surveyed the home. A recreation center flanked her left, a nutritional infusion station her right, and a hallway with a set of stairs shooting up into the second story at twelve o'clock. A wooden end table sat at halfway through the corridor. A puddle and a three-inch-thick portable computation apparatus mingled amongst wads of wrapping paper.

“Lapis came?” Jasper asked.

“Oh yeah, but not for too long,” Greg gestured toward the gifts on the table. “You know how she is. Freest of the free spirits. I didn’t get it in the fridge quickly enough.”

The leather satchel pushed itself into her hand and out of her pocket. The wailing intensified in that instant. “Is it alright?” Jasper inquired. Speaking suddenly grew difficult.

“Oh yeah,” he feigned composure, rushing up the stairs but stopped partway. “Just one sec.”

Jasper couldn’t provide anything more than a mumble. She couldn’t watch him leave, deciding to comb through the first story. Depositing her gift with the others. Her attentions become fixed on the plastic viewing portal in the recreation center. She ran her fingers over its glass face, seeing a faint reflection in it. _I look as depleted as Universe,_ she surmised, catching a hitch in her throat.

“H-hm,” she caught herself as she filtered into the infusion station. There were all manners of unremarkable white, electrical appliances. _An entire cordon for developing nutritional supplements_ , she mused, picking up a book on childcare. She flipped through it before entering the article refreshment chamber.

Through the small window closer to the ceiling than the floor, one could make a night sky bruising slowly with the coming day. She placed the book on top of a dryer. Folded and pressed on an ironing board beside it were several sets of pink onesies. Placing a hand on them was agony. Watching the limbs of the article spill out totally impossible, and it fell into a heap onto the board. _This was a mistake,_ Jasper told herself, making a beeline toward the front door, _this was a mistake. I shouldn’t have ever come. This was impossible._

Her hand wrung the door open, nearly off its hinges. _I’m sorry._

“Jasper,”

It was a shock to her core. It took an even longer moment to realize the sounds of silence. A stifling breeze pushed past her, danced through her hair and into the home. It was impossible to face him. She could feel her entire body shake.

“Don’t you want to at least say hi?”

Her teeth ground themselves to the root. “Universe,”

“I won’t make you, but I have a feeling you really want to,”

She turned. Greg, bedraggled as he was with the previous day, seemed to almost glow. Jasper liked to think that she had complete control of her every expression, that nothing could crack the facade. The glint on the surface of that pink quartz crystal confounded every notion about herself. She wanted to smile. She wanted to frown. She wanted to scream. She wanted to sob and wallow. She wanted to break something, anything!

The small human surrounding the gemstone seemed to be resting soundly.

“Doesn’t seem to like his gem being covered,” Greg practically sighed, running a hand through his small human’s curls. “Glad I finally worked out that little detail. Now we can both get some rest.”

Jasper said nothing. Greg extended it toward the gem.

“I know it was hard, but I appreciate you coming. Eventually.”

Her silence persisted, taking the thing and gemstone into her arms. The transfer wasn’t as smooth as it could’ve been. It opened its eyes. A gurgle accompanied a tiny hand reaching up and placing a hand on her gem. _What did you do, Rose?_

“Whoa,” Greg exclaimed.

“What,” Jasper gasped. A gentle coral glow filled the gap between the quartz soldier and the human male. _This can’t be possible. I thought you were gone._ “Rose?”

“Um, yeah he was doing this a bit earlier,” Greg mumbled, reaching to take back his son. “Peridot thinks it's just an unconscious reaction to-”

Jasper hesitated, holding the gem tighter.

Greg seemed mortified.

The door was open

* * *

II.

Drywall slid off the gem’s forearm with a jerk of the ignition. She could hear the pleading behind the passenger side window.

Jasper wouldn’t even realize that had happened before she was on the highway, hurtling toward the city limits. The faint hints of the morning were becoming bolder in their invasion of what had been an expanse of pocked pitch. The sun kept itself hidden, but the rays continued to brighten the sky into a rich lavender banded in orange. The gem smiled and looked over to the tiny Terran wrapped in an adult-sized parka. It peered up to Jasper, yawning softly.

“It's _me_ ,” she gritted her teeth. “Come on.”

It burbled, playing with the plush fur collar of the coat. _I don’t understand._

“Rose, it’s okay. Let me,” she pulled the van off the highway. Through the windshield, “ _Now Leaving Beach City_ ” announced itself on a billboard. The van was bathed in harsh, mercury light. “See? We’re alone now. I know you’ve kept this form for _him_ , but he’s not here. It’s just us quartzes now, eh?”

The surrounding biomass rolled a bit in its cocoon, reaching out toward the driver.

Jasper felt her smile crack. _This isn’t a game, Rose._ “I know what you said before. That you were ‘giving up’ yourself for,” she struggled to find the words. “Greg _._ But why would you do that? Why,” The hitch to her voice was ugly and violent. She struggled to stow it, hands gripping the steering wheel with an occasional oscillation being sent through her shoulders. _Do this to me? I feel like I’m going to shatter._

The baby tugged on a lock of her hair. She recoiled into the driver's side door. The cabin traced the sudden movement by bouncing atop its suspension. In this confusion, the organic began to wail. “Don’t you dare. How could you leave your family behind?”

It pulled on the fur collar but still chose to wail.

She glanced over at the steering wheel. It had been caved slightly by her grip. “I went along with it. Everyone did. And I thought I knew what was going to happen. But, how could I possibly _understand_ **_this_**?” The small human continued its crying, but its gem drew her attention the most. She drew the pink quartz close, examining it closely.

“I’ve never been so alone is such a long time, Rose,” she confided, running a finger over the quartzes surface. She pinched its outline. “You were all I had left. Please.” _Come back._

She applied a bit more pressure. “I need you back.”

Jasper grunted at the sensation of her hair being pulled again. Her gaze was ushered upward, meeting the happy, chuckling face of the child in her hand. It continued to play and roll the flaxen lochs in its tiny hands. It placed a hand on her cheek and gurgled. And again, Rose’s gem glowed. It would nearly fill the van with its light. There was a snap of rage and gritted teeth, quickly subdued by the laughter. The laughter of an infant boy bouncing against the metal walls of the van. Surrounding her. Enveloping her.

“Rose,”

The glow faded, and the Terran yawned again. An auburn flash across her vision blinded her and sank Jasper behind the driver seat headrest. The dashboard had been rendered golden, with the two seats cutting into it with shadow. Jasper worked the sleeping human into the crook of her arm and held her hand out. Her orange palm shown brilliantly in the strange beam being cast. Making sure the gem was secure she worked her way from the front to the back of the van, assailed with every opportunity by the refraction of light off her gem. The beam was two, the rising sun confined behind twin glass portals. Mitigating the bothersome refraction with her hand, she saw Beach City. A landscape that should have been uniformly white, what _had_ been uniform was lapped at by an ocean on all sides. Homes dispelling overnight build-up, their colorful tops shouting into periwinkle. Lattices of streets and boardwalks drew themselves between it all, snowplows making the roads passable for the newly born day.

Another tug, almost imperceivable, brought her attention back to the babe. She smiled. Then laughed. And laughed. And laughed. It was uncontrollable.

 _It was never for him, was it?_ The quartz closed shut her eyes and put a palm over her mouth in an effort to stem the laughter, _She told me so many times and I just didn’t listen. I didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t about Greg._

The laughter did subside. While of course, the bundle that she was carrying the child in was plush, she saw the softness and vulnerability in the form. Fishing her hair from his grasp, Jasper tucked him further into the parka. He began to doze off again. “This was,” she choked, watching a droplet or two roll off the synthetic nylon surface. “ill-advised, wasn’t it? Guess I’m a harder quartz than I thought.”

She wiped her face and looked over to the driver's side. “Let’s get you home, Ste-”

The name abruptly cut itself off when Jasper began to pick out a distant, particularly sharp vocalization. Shifting onto her feet, she kept her head low and the child close, listen as the sound grew louder and louder. Semblance of concentration was demolished when Jasper was tossed onto her backside. The van buckled left and then right. Metal cried as it was shorn.

“What!” she grunted in frustration, keeping the infant in her care stabilized.

The back doors were flung from their hinges. The sun burned her eyes.

“-ENDER THE STEVEN UNIVERSE!”

 _Surrender?_ Jasper struggled to adjust to the light, but given a second or two, a form was visible. “Peridot?” It wasn’t possible to mistake that hair, the grating voice, and almost _violent_ verdant green. Strangely, she was without her limb enhancers. Well, save the one currently tossing a ball of green energy together.

“Peridot!” another unmistakable voice came from behind the diminutive gem. He stopped just a few feet short of the scene. “What are you doing?! My van!”

“Reacquiring a valuable asset, as requested,” she replied curtly. Greg rounded her and shoved the business end away from the van.

“Are you crazy?! You’d hit Steven!”

Jasper crawled toward the back of the van, taking a seat at the end. “Greg. Peridot.”

Greg’s attention was thoroughly caught. Peridot gave an apathetic groan, reverting the limb enhancer to its default, non-weaponized state. The human grew an unusual shade of pink, darker than usual, especially given the Earth's current position is its revolution. He simply gesticulated wildly with his hands for a moment, struggling to deliver any word to his son’s captor. Peridot merely looked at Jasper with a slight squint, where for once there was some sort of mutual understanding in the _misunderstanding_ of Greg.

“Seems,” the diminutive gem stepped away. “Everything’s under control here. I’ll leave the Greg to you. I trust my routine diagnostics won’t be interrupted _again_ ,” She raised her limb enhancer. The oblong prisms rotated themselves into a propeller and lifted their operator off the asphalt. “Jasper.”

The gem in question nearly growled. Jasper watched as she slowly shrunk into the distant city. She looked back to Greg, who had brought her attention back with a dissatisfied sigh.

He took a few steps towards her. “Is he alright?”

Jasper found a response difficult. A wash of warmth enveloped her, and she suddenly found herself unable to face him. In the crook of her arm, Steven was sleeping soundly. The oversized hood of the coat kept the sun out of his eyes. “Yeah.” The word fell out of her mouth coarse and cracked.

“Oh jeez,” the human remarked, running his hands where a door might’ve been, taking a seat beside Jasper. “Beside” meaning a generous one to two foot berth. “That was a lot of firsts in one night.”

“Morning,” Jasper corrected.

“Yeah,” the human groaned, rubbing his eyes. “And not that I’m supporting you kidnapping Steven but-” He fell backward into the van. “You didn’t have to punch a hole in the wall to get the keys.”

“Right,”

“Ugh,” Greg yawned. “I thought I’d be ready for this. A baby.”

Jasper remained silent.

“You know it's been so hard doing this whole parenting thing on my own,”

She struggled to find the words.

“Not going to lie,” he pushed himself up, running a hand over his thinning pate. “It’s been more of a struggle than I thought without Rose.”

The two sat together in an uncomfortable silence. A break in a conversation that goes on for a breath too long. Where fear collects for every second either party refrains to snuff the quiet out. They watched the sun lift itself up imperceptibly. Wordlessly, Jasper held out Steven. His father took him. He was too exhausted to wipe away his tears.

“Greg,”

The human looked up to the gem soldier.


End file.
